How many colors do you need to color a map so that no two adjacent regions are colored the same? It turns out that no matter how complicated the map is, you only ever need four! Come try your hand at 4-coloring! Videos: A YouTube video from Numberphile about the Four Color Theorem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgbK43jB4rQ Additional…Continue Reading The Four Color Theorem
Given a needle (or stick), what is the smallest area shape that we need to rotate the needle 360 degrees? We will look at this problem from the perspective of several different shapes, we will start with a circle and slowly shave off parts of the shape to see that we can get smaller and…Continue Reading Kakeya Needle Problem
Platonic Solids are 3D shapes that: have faces identical in shape and size have the same number of faces meeting at each vertex, and are convex. How many such solids do you think meet these criteria? Surprisingly, there are precisely 5 and you can easily make them at home. With a hands-on approach through construction…Continue Reading Platonic Solids
Can a “computer” win a game without being programmed with a strategy? Notakto is a variation of tic-tac-toe where both players play “X” and try to AVOID making three-in-a-row. We’ll use cups to stand in for our computer, tell it a list of valid moves, and reward it for winning. Will our computer find the…Continue Reading AI Notakto